This invention relates to forage harvesters of the type having a rotary reel cutterhead for chopping crops previously harvested and/or gathered by an associated unit and, more particularly, to an improvement in the peripheral shielding of the cutterhead to substantially reduce the adverse effects of cut crop carryover.
Carryover is defined as crop which after being sheared from the plant by the action of the cutterhead knives against the shear bar, does not exit through the rearward crop discharge, or recutter screen, if used, but rather remains within the periphery of the cutterhead on the inside leading edges of the knives. In prior machines wherein the periphery of the cutterhead is concentrically shielded on its forward side, the cut crop remains on the knives until it is carried back to the crop entrance area above the shear bar whereat it spills out by centrifugal action and by air flow over the incoming crop plants and the infeed rolls, thus either recycling with the incoming plants or escaping forwardly out of the feed rolls, producing a loss of crop as well as an unsightly appearance of the harvester.